Introduction

SimpleMarkup parses plain text documents and attempts to decompose them
into their constituent parts. Some of these parts are high-level:
paragraphs, chunks of verbatim text, list entries and the like. Other parts
happen at the character level: a piece of bold text, a word in code font.
This markup is similar in spirit to that used on WikiWiki webs, where folks
create web pages using a simple set of formatting rules.

SimpleMarkup itself does no output formatting: this is left to a different
set of classes.

SimpleMarkup is extendable at runtime: you can add new markup elements to
be recognised in the documents that SimpleMarkup parses.

SimpleMarkup is intended to be the basis for a family of tools which share
the common requirement that simple, plain-text should be rendered in a
variety of different output formats and media. It is envisaged that
SimpleMarkup could be the basis for formating RDoc style comment blocks, Wiki entries,
and online FAQs.

Basic Formatting

SimpleMarkup looks for a document's natural left margin. This is used as
the initial margin for the document.

Consecutive lines starting at this margin are considered to be a paragraph.

If a paragraph starts with a "*", "-", or with
"<digit>.", then it is taken to be the start of a list. The
margin in increased to be the first non-space following the list start
flag. Subsequent lines should be indented to this new margin until the list
ends. For example:

* this is a list with three paragraphs in
the first item. This is the first paragraph.
And this is the second paragraph.

1. This is an indented, numbered list.
2. This is the second item in that list
This is the third conventional paragraph in the
first list item.

* This is the second item in the original list

You can also construct labeled lists, sometimes called description or
definition lists. Do this by putting the label in square brackets and
indenting the list body:

[cat] a small furry mammal
that seems to sleep a lot
[ant] a little insect that is known
to enjoy picnics

A minor variation on labeled lists uses two colons to separate the label
from the list body:

cat:: a small furry mammal
that seems to sleep a lot
ant:: a little insect that is known
to enjoy picnics

This latter style guarantees that the list bodies' left margins are
aligned: think of them as a two column table.

Any line that starts to the right of the current margin is treated as
verbatim text. This is useful for code listings. The example of a list
above is also verbatim text.

A line starting with an equals sign (=) is treated as a heading. Level one
headings have one equals sign, level two headings have two,and so on.

A line starting with three or more hyphens (at the current indent)
generates a horizontal rule. THe more hyphens, the thicker the rule (within
reason, and if supported by the output device)

You can use markup within text (except verbatim) to change the appearance
of parts of that text. Out of the box, SimpleMarkup supports word-based and
general markup.

Word-based markup uses flag characters around individual words:

word

displays word in a bold font

word

displays word in an emphasized font

word

displays word in a code font

General markup affects text between a start delimiter and and end
delimiter. Not surprisingly, these delimiters look like HTML markup.

<b>text...</b>

displays word in a bold font

<em>text...</em>

displays word in an emphasized font

<i>text...</i>

displays word in an emphasized font

<tt>text...</tt>

displays word in a code font

Unlike conventional Wiki markup, general markup can cross line boundaries.
You can turn off the interpretation of markup by preceding the first
character with a backslash, so \<b>bold text</b> and \bold
produce <b>bold text</b> and *bold respectively.